I'm with Erik on this one. The are a lot of hand held dB meters on the market. I keep one on my coffee table. I have room control and getting all that stuff out is a PITA. With the hand held I get an answer just by flipping the switch.
Using a dB meter to set up subs is difficult. You would need to impulse test very driver and graph the results. Using say white noise my not produce equal levels between the drivers. The best way to do this is turn the subs up until they are obviously too loud then start dropping the volume a little at a time until the sub just disappears. If the sub does not disappear you have a phase/time alignment problem or just bad subs.
I like my subs aggressive. I use a curve that is up 6 db at 18 Hz dropping to 0 dB at 100 Hz. This produces the air behind that kick drum strike which is very realistic. Check out a small jazz club. Brittany Howard's new album Jaime uses a bass drum without any damping what so ever. You can feel that bass drum head shake producing a glorious boom instead of a thud.
Using a dB meter to set up subs is difficult. You would need to impulse test very driver and graph the results. Using say white noise my not produce equal levels between the drivers. The best way to do this is turn the subs up until they are obviously too loud then start dropping the volume a little at a time until the sub just disappears. If the sub does not disappear you have a phase/time alignment problem or just bad subs.
I like my subs aggressive. I use a curve that is up 6 db at 18 Hz dropping to 0 dB at 100 Hz. This produces the air behind that kick drum strike which is very realistic. Check out a small jazz club. Brittany Howard's new album Jaime uses a bass drum without any damping what so ever. You can feel that bass drum head shake producing a glorious boom instead of a thud.